Pragmatism, Wittgenstein, and the Virtues

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Pragmatism, Wittgenstein, and the Virtues: Three Heterodox Approaches to Ethics

14-5 September 2015, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin

The conference explores the historical and theoretical dialogues between pragmatist ethics, Wittgensteinian moral philosophy, and virtue ethics. Charting different philosophical programs, these three heterodox approaches to ethics offer metaphilosophical alternatives to both the disengaged project of meta-ethics and to the prescriptive project of normative ethics. As against the meta-ethical aspect of moral theory, they question the independence of second-order ethical analysis from first order moral inquiry, while contrary to the prescriptive aspect they recommend a descriptive investigation of moral normativity. The conference surveys the convergences and divergences of these traditions as they have shaped the course of the twentieth (and now twenty-first) century debates about the goals, methods, and limits of moral philosophy.

The event is sponsored by the Irish Research Council New Foundations scheme and the American Voice in Philosophy research project.